Apologies for a cheesy, slightly racistic story but nevertheless. I heard this one a couple of days ago from a Laplander. I've been argued it's a true story. And in case you're wondering, no, Lapland isn't the birthplace of lapdancing. Anyway.
There was this family from Rovaniemi who had a summer home, a small cottage, not far from the town in the woods. They were a man and his wife and their two grown up sons, one of which was a bit 'slow'. You know, engine running but no one behind the wheel.
It was autumn and it had been a great season for berries. Finnish people like berries very much. So the whole family went up to their summer home to do some berry picking for the weekend. However, as it had been a great season there were a lot of berries still up for grabs at the nearabouts of the cabin when the good people intended to leave on Sunday. So the mentally challenged son suggested he would stay there alone for a few more days to pick some more berries. And so he did.
The next day his mother called him to check up on him. She asked how he was doing to which he replied "I'm all right mom. Everything is just fine. Except there's a troll here."
The woman was slightly disoriented in her disbelief but assured her son "there were no trolls at this latitude." The next day however she was a bit worried of her son, and called him again. Her son announced how everything was just fine as he had "locked the troll up in the sauna." This naturally got the woman worried so she drove up to the cabin to find a Vietnamese bloke locked up in her sauna.
Morale of the story? Come up with it yourself. I guess even if you manage to fight the polar bears you might still end up caged in a sauna on your holiday in Lapland.*
*This is not really true. The Vietnamese man was only working in Finland for the summer. A lot of Vietnamese people come to pick berries in Lapland.